Word

I think it's been about two years since I last 'performed' any poetry, which makes sense since until recently it had been about that long since I wrote anything new. But oh, I had forgotten how great it is.

It started when I first arrived in Derby and joined a poetry group. It was everything I could have wanted from it -- a bunch of people who liked to drink a lot and read poetry and get feedback on their work.

Once a month we would go to an open mike poetry night held in the back room of a pub. This back room was without light, electricity or heating -- but sometimes they would have had the generator running for long enough for the heater to have warmed the place up. It had character. So we would go and drink and read our work and listen to other people from the area and it was good. The organiser was always looking for somewhere better to hold it though -- it was always "When we find a new venue...".

But when the new venue was found and we all moved it had lost its soul. It moved some sterile function rooms. It was heated. The lights were either on or off. There was a bar, but it was over-priced and the bartender always looked like it was the worst place in the world for him to be in. I think I lost my inspiration. One day I went along on my own -- where the poetry group were at this point I don't remember, maybe it was outside of term time. I remember reading one short, unhappy poem to a lukewarm reception. And I didn't go again.

Not until Matt and I returned from Utah years later. By this time the organiser had changed, and the venue was now a church hall. From bad to worse, if you ask me. There was no bar (I need a drink in me before I stand in front of a room full of people to read my work), but instead free soft drinks and an older, stuffier group of people. None of the people I used to know. We went once, and never bothered again.

Two years on and I'm living in a different city. I can't remember if I found the flier for the open mike night before I wrote the new poem -- I think maybe I did. I knew I would be going with [San], which meant that I wouldn't feel comfortable reading old poems written about Fiona. So one drink-fuelled night I wrote a poem about San.

This time the venue is a pub. Not an unlit, crypt-like back room -- but in the main bar itself. Maybe Thursdays are a quiet night, or maybe people have just learned to stay away if they aren't interested in the poetry, but the only people in the place were for the open mike.

It was a wet and dark night. San was late for meeting me as usual, and I was waiting around outside the pub in the rain, watching the traffic and trying to work out if any of the people walking my way were her. After about 20 minutes I saw her -- I could recogniser her even in the dark: a long black coat, an umbrella and she was walking quickly because she knew she was late.

I won't give a step by step account of the night. I liked nearly everyone who read (I found a few pieces that went on for pages and pages very hard to concentrate on for any length of time), and my own poems seemed well recieved.

I read Serial Killer, The Seductive Neon, and my untitled poem about San that I might call Hypothetically Speaking. I don't expect anyone -- other than one or two people -- to recognise any of those from just the title. All the same, I'm not comfortable with posting my poetry in here.

What? I can read my poems to rooms full of strangers, but won't show them to anyone here, who I don't consider friends? Maybe I would I will put them in special entries and only release the links to them on request.

All the same, you can bet I will be at the Castle Rock again next month. With hopefully something else new to read, because I feel like a phony reading old work.